The 'Over Life' controls

There are four 'Over Life' custom controls in Trapcode Particular. The controls are: Color over Life, Size over Life, Opacity over Life, and Transfer Mode over Life.

These controls contain appear in both the main Particle group and in the Aux System group to let you set the controls separately for each particle group. For example, The Particle group has a control for the main particles' Color over Life values, while the Aux System group has an identical control that sets only the the Aux particles' Color over Life values.

Color Over Life

Color Over Life sets the particle's color over its lifespan and is active when the Set Color popup is set to Over Life.

For this, Particular uses a gradient interface. The color gradient consists of a number of color boxes. The gradient is interpolated between the boxes.

The Set Color menu options in the Particle group.

The Color Over Life gradient has four control areas for setting the color on the gradient, choosing a preset and randomizing or reversing the gradient.

Opacity bar, Result bar

The top bars give an idea of what the resulting color gradient will look like. The Opacity bar will appear a solid color if the Opacity Over Life control is set to a constant graph. If the Opacity over Life has a custom graph, such a for example a linearly decreasing opacity, then the bar will show a gradient from white to black indicating that the alpha value of the particle is decreasing over time in relation to the colors on the gradient result bar.

Add a color box

To add a color box, click in the area just below the gradient (dotted in the image above). The box will initially get the color the gradient shows at that position.

Change, move or delete the color

To change the color of a box, double click it. Double-clicking the box will bring up the Adobe color picker (new in 2.0), where you can set the color for the box. To move a box, click and drag it sideways along the gradient. To delete a box, click and drag it downwards away from the gradient bar.

Select a preset

To select one of the presets, click it. This will immediately replace the current gradient. You can NOT undo this operation.

Random Command

Choosing this button in the command row will change all the boxes' to new colors. If you have five gradient boxes, then all five will get new colors.

Flip Command

All color boxes are flipped around the center, reversing their order. This is useful for changing to the start and end color of the gradient.

Copy, Paste Command

These commands copy the gradient to clipboard, and paste the gradient colors from the clipboard. If nothing has been copied, then the Paste button will not appear in the control. This command is useful for moving color gradient value between the main Particle group and the Aux System color group.

Size, Opacity, & Transfer Mode over Life

Trapcode Particular offers a curve-drawing interface for the following controls.

- Size over Life sets the particle's Size over its lifespan.
- Opacity over Life sets the particle's Opacity over its lifespan.
- Transfer Mode over Life sets the particle's Transfer Mode over its lifespan but is only active when the Normal Add Over Life or Normal Screen Over Life mode is selected in the Transfer Mode control under the Particle group.

The Size over Life sets the size for the particle over its lifespan.

The Opacity over Life sets the transparency value for the particle over its lifespan.

The Transfer Mode over Life control lets you draw a graph to have the transfer mode blend from the Normal to Add or Screen mode over the life of the particle.

Draw a curve

To draw a curve, click and paint inside the drawing area.

Select a preset

To select one of the presets, click it. This will immediately change the value graph to the selected preset. From top to bottom the preset are: constant maximum over life, linear decay over life, linear rise and then decay over life, gaussian rise and fall, half and half, and smooth decay with random maximum.

The constant graph maintains the maximum value through the life of the particle.

The linear decay graph transitions from the maximum value to zero through the life of the particle.

The rise and decay graph starts at zero, rises to the maximum value one quarter of the way through the life of the particle, then decays to zero at the end of the particle's life.

The gaussian graph smoothly transitions from zero at birth to the the maximum value one quarter of the way through the life of the particle, maintains the maximum value until three quarters of the way through the life of the particle and smoothly transitions to zero at the end of the particle's life.

The half and half graph maintains the maximum value through nearly half of particle's lifespan, then quickly transitions to zero.

The smooth graph plus random starts out at the maximum value, then between one quarter and three quarters of the lifespan the values ease to zero. Once the transition begins in the graph, random maximum value appear through the rest of the life span. This is useful on the opacity over life graph to create the appearance of randomly sparkling particles like fireworks fading out but sparkling briefly as they fade.

Random Command

The button sets the graph values completely randomly.

The Size over Life graph after the Random command is clicked.

Flip Command

The graph is flipped about the center point between birth and death. This is useful for turning a linear decay graph into a linearly increasing graph.

This is an example of choosing the linear decay preset then clicking the flip command to reverse the graph.

Copy, Paste Command

These commands copy the value graph to clipboard, and paste the resulting graph from the clipboard. If nothing has been copied, then the Paste button will not appear in the control. This command is useful for moving the graph value between the main Particle group and the Aux System group or between the size and opacity over life graphs.